Women in front-line combat: a handy world map

Our stories last week on the Pentagon’s decision to open the doors to women who want to serve in combat didn’t touch much upon the other countries that allow such service.

This does: A Washington Post map that color-codes nations that allow women to serve in front-line and other combat roles. Handy reference.

The delineation, however, underlines what is often ignored or overlooked in the debate over whether women should serve in front-line combat: What, in this day and age, constitutes front-line combat versus “major combat roles?”

I get the difference between someone serving as an intelligence analyst in a forward battalion headquarters and an infantry soldier. But the reality is blurrier than that.

In early December, I interviewed an Air Force helicopter pilot who flew a specially equipped, heavily armed Pave Hawk with an elite pararescueman unit aboard into hot fire zones in eastern Afghanistan while rescuing injured troops. She and a PJ calmly described a recent, harrowing mission in which the helo was being fired upon, and was returning fire, while lowering another PJ to the ground to rescue a fallen Afghan soldier – and, after circling away, returning to finish the rescue.

Tell me how that’s not front-line combat, please.

It’ll be interesting to see what the Army and Marine Corps conclude in their studies (due in 2016) about the efficacy of women in front-line, shared-foxhole, fixed-bayonet jobs – not only whether they’re suited for them, but also whether infantry troops are likely to ever find themselves ever digging foxholes or conducting fixed-bayonet charges again.

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About this Blog

It’s all things military in Delaware: Dover AFB, the Army and Air National Guard and all veterans' issues - particularly VA health care and employer compliance with the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. Questions, concerns or story tips? Contact me at bmcmichael@delawareonline.com or 302-324-2812.

About the author

Bill McMichael came to The News Journal in 2012 after 12 years with Gannett’s Military Times newspaper family; he has covered the military, from the Pentagon to ships at sea, for more than two decades. He's written about the Navy’s Tailhook scandal; racial integration of the military; the punishment of a whistle-blowing Navy SEAL; naval operations at the outset of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; sex trafficking outside U.S. bases in South Korea; medical malpractice; and military law.